Be Still
by Fantaspasia
Summary: There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it. OC!Insert


I've been asked if this is a polyamory, and I will say right now that I have no plans for the story to go that way. Right now, it's just a love triangle. If, as I'm writing, the characters decide they want a polyamory, then I won't fight to turn it away from that, but it's still not very likely for that to happen here.

I just wanted to let everyone know that. Enjoy the story. ;)

 **Prologue**

 _Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like._ —Lemony Snicket

I came into my new world with a heart full of grief. I screamed and cried and fussed at everything, and I didn't much care that I should have been better than that. I felt smothered by the pain in my heart; the fact that I should _act my age_ didn't really register.

In a way, I kind of was acting my age. Go figure.

It felt like waking up from a long, deep sleep, and as the cold air registered in my mind, I could feel the memory slipping away. Like the dream that is forgotten as soon as you wake up. I knew it was there, knew that something had just happened, but trying to figure it out just gave me a headache. So, I stopped.

Time flew by after that, and many thoughts and happenings darted in and out of my mind before I could grasp onto their concepts. I realized later that it was because developing babies don't form true long term memories until about two years old. Through it all, however, there was one thing that was always there. I came to call it Before.

Before this thing that was Me, there had been another. Still me, but not. Thinking on it too much hurt, so I didn't do it very often in the beginning, but I could feel it in the back of my mind, waiting for the day I could handle it. I wasn't sure yet if I wanted that day to come.

My first year of life was really just a series of partial awareness, most of which fled my mind soon after. There were faces and people who flitted in and out of my vision all the time, and though I forgot most of them, there were two who stood above the rest. I later came to realize that they were my new parents. The baby in me accepted them wholeheartedly, and at that age, the rest of me had no choice but to follow along. I grew to love them very dearly, regardless. There were flashes of crawling and playing and learning. The language was something that I had never known before, though it gave me a mild case of what I later came to realize was déjà vu, and I found myself absorbing it like a sponge.

My first word was 'ka' and though it was just a sound, not even a word, my new parents took it as 'mom'. My first steps came soon after that, at just before I was to reach one, and true awareness began to return to me. I came to realize that the memories had always been there, just pushed to the back of my mind, and as they started to come forward, I saw the differences it caused in the world around me. I misjudged distances quite a lot, which was written off as baby clumsiness, while my mind adapted to the change in pace. I thought more and more often about the life I had left behind, and I realized very quickly that I had been reborn, that I had been given another chance. I soaked up the language, learning it much quicker than I had thought I would, though I didn't really speak much of it aloud. I didn't want to attract too much attention by learning so much faster than I should have. Something about showing that off just didn't sit right with me.

That decision turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

I didn't yet know what this place was; it was distinctly Asian in style, perhaps Japanese, but there was so much more to it. I saw hints of other cultures in the way things looked and the people I saw on a day to day basis. There were lots of bright colors—especially hair; I didn't know how much of it was real and how much was dyed, but the unusual colorings drew my attention like the moth to a flame—and many objects I came into contact with were things I could never have seen coming from an Asian culture. It was amazing to my senses.

And then, I turned two.

As a general rule, babies don't really get out much, except for playdates and mandatory doctor's visits, and my awareness of the world around me was still rather recent in the grand scheme of things. I couldn't actually recall what the world outside my home looked like, beyond the vague notion that it was a very bustling, colorful town. My first true foray out into the world was also the day I came to realize just _where_ I had ended up.

Grabbing a fistful of okaa-chan's hair, I took only a moment to enjoy the softness of it, before shoving the purple strands into my mouth.

I'd made a game of seeing how far I could go, how much I could get myself into before she stopped me. More or less, she seemed to leave me to my exploring, except when it was dangerous or involved her hair. Okaa-chan was ridiculously proud of her hair. It was an odd shade—obviously dyed, since purple hair could not be natural—but it looked good on her.

"It's not playtime yet, Haru-chan," she told me, jostling me on her hip as she reached up with her free hand to tug her hair out of my mouth. "Don't chew on okaa-chan's hair, alright?" She smiled gently down at me as she continued her pace down what appeared to be a main road. I had yet to see any cars, but from the look of things, they probably weren't needed. I hadn't seen much of it, but it didn't have the look of a large town or a city.

I gave her a toothy grin and excitedly tried to look over her shoulder at everything that caught my eye. The buildings around us appeared to be a more colorful version of traditional designs; there were reds and yellows and oranges, which were the sort of colors used more in food and shopping than anything else. It made sense, considering how many other people were there; I assumed that this must be the shopping district of whatever town this was. It didn't look like something I'd see in Japan—most of the people didn't even look Japanese—but I brushed it off in favor of observing some of the people around me. Most of the skin tones seemed to be varying shades of olive to well-tanned to an ivory paleness. I didn't really see anything darker, except for the few I saw with an Asian look to them, and that made me curious. Surely, there was more variety in this place than that?

In hair color, there were a lot of browns and blacks and blondes, but as we moved through the shopping district, I saw a few other colors spotted in-between. There was pink and blue and green, and further off, I swore I saw white, which wouldn't have been odd, except that its owner hadn't appeared to be old. Even the normal colors were more vibrant than normal; I'd seen some blondes that looked almost yellow, and still more that was more orange than anything else. It was all very curious, and I found myself bouncing in my place on okaa-chan's hip as I observed it all.

Being a child again, more often than not, meant that I had a great deal more energy than I knew what to do with, so as much as I tried to behave, I often ended up running off to explore every inch of the apartment I shared with my parents. This trip was effectively the only time I'd been outside that I could really remember. Being so young meant that I'd had a horrible memory for things like that, though I'm sure okaa-chan had taken me out places before today.

Okaa-chan turned a corner, and everything seemed to change. The colors were still bright, and there were quite a few people milling about, but the atmosphere seemed different. More muted, somehow. Looking around, I noted that the shops on this street were of a different sort, but I couldn't read yet, and okaa-chan didn't stop at any of them. Instead, she made several more turns on the course of her journey, ever silent, and I found myself getting more and more excited over what was to come. The curiosity was eating away at me.

Looking up, beyond the buildings and houses, something caught my eye. It was huge, maybe a cliff of sorts, but my toddler eyes couldn't really make out any details beyond that the shape of it was strange. It made me wonder that—perhaps—it had been man made. Tugging on okaa-chan's kimono top, I smiled at her when she looked down at me and pointed up at the cliff.

"What's that?" I asked her, squinting to try and get a better look at it.

"Oh, Haru-chan, that's the Hokage Mountain," she told me, and something about her words sent alarm bells blaring in my skull.

"Hokage…Mountain?" That sounded really familiar.

"Uh-huh. I'll show you when we get a bit closer, okay? Okaa-chan's going to the Hokage Tower, which is right in front of the mountain. You can get a really good look at it there."

I blinked. "Okay, Okaa-chan."

Hokage Tower?

' _What's going on? Why does this feel so familiar?'_

The closer we got to the alleged 'mountain', the clearer the image became, and the more I began to worry. This didn't feel right to me, not at all. We were almost right in front of it when I realized just what it was.

' _It's Mount Rushmore with three faces,'_ I found myself thinking, and I could almost taste the answer for this, right on the edge of my tongue, _'three very different faces. Who are those people?'_

"Okaa-chan, who are they?" I asked, pointing up at the faces, and she smiled at me as we stopped to observe them.

"Those are our village's Hokage, our leaders," she told me, and I felt that spark again. "The First Hokage, on the far left, was Hashirama Senju. He was the one who created our village and brought all the clans together. The one in the middle was his brother, Tobirama Senju; he took care of the village after Hashirama died, and then our third Hokage is Hiruzen Sarutobi. He's watching over the village right now."

Surely, she didn't expect a two year old to understand all that. I had, of course, but she had no way of knowing I was picking up the language quite so fast as I actually was. She'd used the simplest explanation possible, regardless, but I still wasn't very comfortable with revealing my smarts, just yet. So, I blinked up at her as cutely as I could manage and forced a yawn, using the opportunity to bury my face in her shoulder.

She laughed and ran a hand through my hair. "Oh, I'm sorry, Haru-chan. I suppose that was a bit too much, wasn't it? Don't worry; I'll tell you more about it when you're older."

I didn't respond, choosing instead to burrow into her, and she started walking again. I was so close to figuring it out, now. The answer was right there; I just needed to think. Hashirama. Tobirama. The Senju clan. Clan? Uchiha. The Massacre.

And then, everything came together in my mind with one definitive click.

 _Naruto._

I'd been an anime fan the first time around, and this was one anime I watched almost religiously. I'd never been big on manga, but at one point, I ran out of episodes to watched—both dubbed and subbed—and used the internet to gain access to the manga. I got bored and read every chapter available, and then kept going at it as it was updated, as new episodes were aired. In all my twenty-one years of life, I don't think I ever focused on any other series quite so much as that one.

But, this didn't seem possible. There was no way it was _real_. For one thing, it'd have to be another world entirely, to make even half of what they do possible. No way. No.

"Haru-chan?" Okaa-chan called, shaking me a bit, as if she thought I'd gone to sleep. "Honey, we're here."

Curiously—and in major denial—I looked up from her shoulder to observe the world around me. There was a building close by, probably a school, considering all the children running about, and a lot of trees. Right in front of us, however, was some kind of rudimentary playground. There was a swing and a jungle gym of sorts, and some benches were set up near the closest edges, probably for the adults. There were a lot of kids of varying ages running about, though I didn't think they were all from the school. I frowned when I realized the lack of adult supervision.

' _Why are there no adults? Where are all the parents?'_ I wondered, but before I could figure out the answer, okaa-chan set me down onto my feet.

Crouching down in front of me, she placed a hand atop my head and grinned down at me. "Alright, Haru-chan, you go have fun with the other kids while okaa-chan takes care of some things at the tower so I can go be a kunoichi again. I'll be back to get you when I'm done."

She stood up to her full height and waved cheerily down at me.

' _No way,'_ I thought, turning my head to look at the kids again, desperate to prove that this whole situation was normal and that someone else would notice how odd my mother was being. How strange everything was. _'No way she's just going to leave me here all alone.'_

I looked back at Okaa-chan and found myself blinking rapidly. She was gone. I looked about, first left and then right, with no signs of her, and then turned to look back at all the screaming children. My heart was beating a mile a minute, and I didn't know what to do. Did I try to look for mom? Did I stay right where I was, waiting for her to come back? Or, did I try to go make friends, like she'd asked of me?

Surely, this couldn't actually be normal here? Where was here? Naruto wasn't real; it was just a story. _It couldn't be possible._

Desperately, I shook my head of those thoughts and turned my gaze upon the kids, and I found that the majority of them were playing what appeared to be a huge, more complicated game of tag.

' _Ninja,'_ my mind whispered. _'They're playing ninja.'_

The ones not playing seemed to have separated into smaller groups. Most of the girls seemed to converge together on the left side of the playground, though I didn't know what they were doing. There were several smaller groups of boys spotting the yard, and I found, while observing them, that the swings were empty. Not knowing what else to do, I made my way over to it, skirting the edge of the grounds to avoid the games, and in doing so, I accidentally brought myself closer to a small group of about three older boys. They looked to be around seven or eight years old, and one was—apparently—defending himself against the other two. As I passed, I caught part of their conversation.

"Uh-huh! I can so do it!" one said, his voice defensive.

"No you can't," another responded, and his voice was arrogant and self-confident. "Sensei hasn't even taught it to us yet. There's no way you know it, already."

"I can too," he repeated loudly, and he seemed angry that they didn't believe him.

"Prove it, then," the third boy demanded. "Show us the jutsu."

At the word jutsu, my feet seemed to freeze of their own accord, and I turned my full attention to them. Out of the corner of my eye, I noted that I wasn't the only one. Some of the other kids had also come to watch.

"Fine." His back was to me, but I saw his arms move—hand signs—and then, there was an explosion of smoke. "Bunshin no jutsu!"

My heart jumped, and as the smoke cleared, there were suddenly two of the boy standing there, rather than one. The second one, however, lacked any color at all. He was, literally, just a boy-shaped blob of grey.

"Okay, so maybe it's not perfect, but…"

The conversation faded from my ears, and I felt myself sway on my feet. I was feeling a bit lightheaded, and I noted very briefly that I'd stopped breathing.

' _It's real.'_

And then, darkness.

 **End**

Right now, I'm focusing on my other Naruto SI-OC story for a while, but once I'm comfortable where it's at, I'll work on getting this updated.


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